Monsters and Blood
by tFantasyFan
Summary: A broken story with reflections between. When actions make monsters and running doesn't help, the weight of death can become too much to bear.


_This is an idea that's been bouncing around in my head for a while; teasing me, taunting me, daring me to make an effort, and I'm just going to go for it._

_Disclaimer: No, they don't belong to me. I'm not that lucky, it would seem._

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He could hear them sometimes, from his place in the sewers: footsteps, heavy and thundering, constantly drumming against the pavement, marking the sluggish centipede that was the human race living overhead. Pounding out a rhythm he'd become well acquainted with, that he'd felt reverberating within his bones as he watched them through rusted metal grates, that his heart had always kept time with even as a child. At night, staring at the ceiling, he imagined he could feel it thrumming, imagined that the city had been all the more _his_ because he survived at the very core of it, where the deepest filth threaded through the veins of what felt like a metal and concrete beast, massive and constantly shifting, challenging him to be defiant simply by living.

Raphael had always made it a point never to back down from a challenge, and so he had lived, slept to the sounds of the subway as it sent rattling vibrations down into his home in the middle of the night, listening, even where his brothers couldn't hear, where he shouldn't hear it, to the sounds of millions of marching feet above their heads.

Always above them. He supposed there was some kind of irony to be found in that, but irony did not necessarily bring humor; in fact, he'd found it brought a kind of bitter awareness more often than not. They would always be above him, even as he hurled himself onto rooftops, looking down at the tops of their heads from places he imagined they never took the time to find. As often as he and his brothers leapt into danger at the sounds of screaming, as many lives as they had saved, as much blood as they had lost in the process, the majority of the human race would always consider itself above them, and as often as he found himself wondering what would happen if he just let those screams go unanswered, he could never bring himself to find out. Perhaps the fact that he couldn't _not _answer made him a coward: perhaps the fact that he didn't want to in the first place made him a monster. Or maybe it really didn't matter either way, because he would never be able to stop answering, to stop lurking on rooftops like some unholy gargoyle, waiting for the signal sounds that told him that someone was somewhere and in need of something he possessed.

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He was irrevocably tied to the city, to the sounds of gunshots and shattered windows and barking dogs; the present pulsing activity that told a million different stories of success and failure, of lives saved and deaths that nobody would care about, of cries that would never be answered. New York was all he knew, it was almost physically fused into his persona, to the point where he could practically feel the pulling of the triggers, could feel his body thrown to one side in the aftermath of a hit-and-run, was imbedded so thoroughly that he knew it caused his father and elder brothers great concern to see him step outside of their home in the evenings. Secretly, he wondered when it was that they would ask him to stop.

And in wondering this, he found himself to be really wondering when it was that he would have to disappoint them more soundly than he'd already managed by leaving to hit the rooftops anyway, because he would never be able to stop. Eventually, he would find his end out there, would find that it could end no other way than with frozen concrete and his own failure to show that he cared enough not to leave his family before they were ready. The knowledge was painful, but it was too late for him to do things differently now. Over time, he had discovered that, for him, there was no other way.

His father, he knew, would tell him differently. He could hear the ancient voice in the back of his mind, telling him there was always a choice, that it was never too late to change, probably through some old proverb whose words were as twisted and looped as a spider's web. By the end, he would grasp the general meaning, but not the entirety, as he suspected the entire idea behind those twisted lessons to be. For a moment, staring out over the shifting lights of the city, crouching in the shadows, Raphael listened to that voice; for a moment, he had very nearly convinced himself to return home. He twisted on his feet, judged the accuracy of his aim, prepared to lunge for a nearby fire escape, grasping the ladder rungs with expert precision.

The sound of 3 discharging bullets halted him mid-motion. There was a moment of hesitation, during which his head swung over to glance in the direction he'd heard the disturbance originating from. Tires squealed in the distance, the sound of them rising up to him, almost as tangible as the smog-filled air he drew into his lungs. It wasn't far enough not to be his concern. It never was. Dark green fingers tightened momentarily over cold, grainy metal as the decision was made.

In all honesty, there had been no decision to be made, no choice in the matter: at least, not really. He would never be able to stop. Eyes squeezed closed briefly in his frustration as Raphael shoved away from the ladder, flipping to land neatly on the adjacent roof with the slightest of noises. His family wouldn't receive it, but he sent out a silent apology nonetheless, and ran.

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He couldn't always remember what it had been like: innocence, and empathy, and a time when he could find the good in any person, in any situation. That was more an area of Mikey's expertise now than it ever was his. Part of him wondered why it had to be so; the other part of him explained the reasons through the conveyance of dead bodies and through the warm blood that coated his hands. They were difficult reasons to forget.

It never ceased to amaze him that he could still feel blood there no matter how much time had passed since it was spilt to begin with. The weight it, pressing into his skin, piling the dead upon his shoulders, seemed to be quite real. He would find himself, sometimes, wiping off his hands on a nearby towel or washing them in the sink with no memory of having walked up to it, in an effort to relieve some of the unearthly gravity. Raphael had debated, at one time, asking his father how to get rid of it, but in the end he had not. Death was unavoidable in the life of a ninja, and life wouldn't pile on more weight than he could support at one time. He took the idea to heart, attempted to shake off the remnants of regret that threatened to crush him at any given time, and at the same time ended up pulling them closer until such time as he was allowed to collapse.

And perhaps that had been a mistake, and perhaps it had not. It only depended on when the weight would suddenly become too much to bear.

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Things tended to only go one way where bullets were involved. It didn't matter how quickly he and his brothers could manage to get to the scene, weapons at the ready and immediately striking defensive stances, they never made it in time to stop the act. The crack of ammo being dispensed was like a too-late warning siren, sent them running towards the disturbance while hoping that it had only been a warning shot or that somebody got lucky enough to dodge.

In all the times he'd responded to such crimes as these, nobody had ever been lucky enough to dodge. And, more often than not, he'd find that the person behind the trigger was long gone, either terrified that they'd gone through with the act or experienced enough to know not to stick around afterwards. Either way, he ended up happening upon empty scenes and dead bodies, left with the trying task of dealing with the aftermath. As terrifying as guns could be, no one ever seemed to be willing to call 911 from the safety of their terraced apartments, ever dared to peek out from behind their curtains to see what was happening. He wondered how many lives could have been saved if a single person had had a mind to call for help earlier on, but shook the thought away as he landed, cat-like, in the alley below.

Needless to say, he wasn't surprised to find it devoid of one gun-toting criminal. They'd probably faded away with the vehicle that had pealed out of the area not long ago. In fact, they would probably be back out on the streets tomorrow, prepared to do the same thing to another stranger for little more than drugs and pocket change. Desperation was like a disease, spreading from one person to another, infecting even the most seemingly-innocent children in a never-ending cycle of death and violence. It was a fact he'd grown accustomed to: people born at the bottom tended to die at the bottom.

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Raphael could look down on a city street and see everything for what it was. Where Donnie would see the statistics including ethnicities and the criminal populace, where Michelangelo would see the few families that seemed to be happy and Leo would see the places they were most likely to be ambushed from, see the criminals out in the open, he found space to simply see what could be seen. The children playing games with smiles on their faces, heading home to abusive parents and not knowing that they deserved better, that better things were even out there. He saw the drug addict shooting up, propped up against a mailbox and right in their sight, the woman standing on the street corner who was probably somebody's big sister or mother or cousin, who would someday get into a car and never come back. Of all of it, he watched the children most of all. Because they were just kids, playing games, and they were going to be doctors or presidents or musicians, and they either didn't know or didn't care that in ten years, it would be them propped up against that mailbox, standing on that corner, buried in the cemetery after getting caught in the crossfire of some kind of gang war they weren't really involved with. It always ended that way.

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The bloody, crumpled figure on the ground coughed, shifted weakly against the cracked pavement, hand scrabbling at nothingness, and he pulled himself away from his thoughts in exchange for gently turning them over. A young man, maybe two years older than he was, with messy blond hair and watering green eyes, pale and skinny and looking far too old for his own good, stared up at him. Raphael didn't begrudge the stare; if he'd been in the same position, human and in pain and bleeding sluggishly through three holes in his stomach, a giant turtle certainly wouldn't be what he expected to see, either. He took a closer look at the wounds, pulled out his phone, and dialed the authorities, even if the kid's chances weren't good. The blue t-shirt was slowly turning purple. Considering the fact that his least violent brother wore purple, it was a strange color to associate with death.

He met the green eyes, which seemed to him to be more amused than scared at this point, and wondered what joke he was missing out on. As though in connection to his thoughts, the kid gestured weakly at the phone in an emerald green hand, opened his mouth as though to say something, only he didn't get the chance to say more as his muscles seized up in pain. No doubt he would've said something smart-assed anyway. Kind of like Mikey in that sense, really. Nonetheless, he seemed to be finding some kind of irony in the situation, and apparently irony was amusing enough to cover up the fact that he was dying.

Raphael had never been able to find irony amusing. As it was, he considered the fact that he'd run by the idea earlier. A shaking hand clenched his wrist suddenly, a plea for his attention, and he gave it to him. There was a line of dark red dribbling down the narrow chin, tinting the inside of his nostrils, and the turtle met his eyes, feeling strangely detached. Lips quivered and moved, mouthing a request as the smaller, five-fingered hand gestured towards his belt.

_Do me a favor. _Amber eyes followed the gesture, followed the shifting gaze to the silver weapons he wore, shot back up in understanding. He shook his head sternly.

"Sorry, kid, no can do. You ain't dead yet, and there's an ambulance on the way." Eyebrows rose, amused for a moment, before settling into something more serious. The grip on his wrist tightened almost painfully, insistent, the boy's watery gaze deadpan and more than just a little afraid. Blond hair ruffled slightly as he nodded, pleading and pained.

_It hurts. Please…do me a favor. _Raphael glanced at the wounds again, heart pounding at the enormity of what he was being asked. There was more blood than before, spreading across the fabric of the clothing. None had pooled beneath them. The bullets were still inside. He looked back at the boy and away again, closed his eyes and tried to keep himself from shaking. The words echoed in his head as loudly as though they'd been screamed, repeating themselves with a note of desperation that probably would have been there in actuality.

_It hurts._

_Please…do me a favor._

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He wondered, sometimes, if he'd ever truly done anything to warrant being labeled a monster. And if he were one, was it because of what he was or what he'd become? The question niggled at his brain, picked its way into his thoughts day in and day out, left him pounding fruitlessly at the punching bag and lashing out at anything that moved. Raphael wasn't sure when he'd first become aware of the word and what it would mean to him in the future, only that one day it had come upon him in the form of realization.

They were different from the people living above them, and if they were caught they'd be punished for it. He'd mulled it over in his head for a long while, watching Mikey's sci-fi and horror movies, reading stories in books and papers, trying to make a connection between himself and the monsters he found there. As it turned out, not all of the monsters were creatures having no relation to humans. In fact, human monsters could be the worst of them all. It had made him angry, the fact that humans capable of such horrifying things could be allowed to walk in daylight when he and his family, who, to his knowledge, hadn't yet done anything wrong, were forbidden the same right.

Later on in life, sometime after nearly caving Mike's head in and nearly shoving a sai through Leo's throat, he began to question his definition of the word. It became a recurring word in his nightmares as he watched himself from a distance, his family and himself unable to intervene in time. After a while, they became tolerable, forgotten or ignored. But it didn't stop the question from circling his brain like a giant bird of prey: _what am I?_

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He knew he was going to do it before he could admit it to himself. That was, perhaps, the most stinging part of the entire situation. Some could call it mercy; others would call it merciless.

Some would call it murder, he told himself bitterly, opening his eyes. The kid smiled up at him a little, seeing the answer before it was even given. Funny how he kept thinking of him as a kid when he probably had a few years on him. Maybe if he kept that in mind, it would make this easier. Maybe if he told himself it was an act of mercy, he wouldn't feel like a murderer.

Something told him that the thought was foolish. He was inclined to agree.

The sai came out of his belt with a soft scraping noise, and Raphael turned it in his hand for a few moments, watching the way the edges caught the faint light from beyond the alley entrance. Only recently had it come to his attention just how dangerous they were to others, even while he could perform any number of maneuvers and tricks with them without landing a scratch on himself. The potential increased tenfold now, the blade sharp and wicked looking in the dark. Amber eyes met green, and he hesitated. Pale hand tugged his own down slightly, aimed at the throat, gave him the all-clear. Silver blade rested against the quivering skin- or maybe it was his hand that was quivering. He wasn't sure.

Raphael sucked in a breath. He steeled his resolve, pressed down and swept across. Life drained from green eyes and he bowed his head, not caring that the blood was seeping onto the ground, covering his knees. It was over in an arc of splattering crimson, staining his hands, his arms, his plastron, spattered across his face, and in a single act he made himself a monster.

Sirens echoed in the distance. His shell cell rang from its holding place on its belt. He couldn't bring himself to answer it, let it ring four times before it would cut to voicemail, not caring who it was. Raphael stumbled to his feet, body operating on autopilot as he made his way to the roof of the nearest building. The phone rang again.

He didn't answer it. Instead, he ran.

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Ever since his first kill, he'd been aware of the weight of the dead. He didn't know if it was the guilt or the shame or the bodies or the blood that did it, only that something had set itself upon his shoulders with every intention of pressing him into the ground. There had been times when he wanted it to, when he wanted nothing more than to crumble into pieces and be absorbed into the earth, to not have to hold himself up any longer. As often as he'd wanted it to, however, it never had. He was too proud to be broken, too strong to allow himself to be weak, and maybe it was only a matter of time.

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There are moments in life, varied and unpredictable and hard to remember properly, that make a person into the very thing they turn out to be. Until now, he hadn't accepted the largest moments in his life for being those very ones. Because accepting them was admitting to being what they had made him, and Raphael had never _wanted _to be what his worst moments made him. Never wanted to see what he had done to himself.

He'd fought against gaining realization, against seeing his reflection in mirrors, against the weight that was crushing him from the inside out, and all of that fighting had gotten him nothing but the mockery of his own spirit. He screamed at himself for being a coward, hardened his heart against the words that thrummed in unison with the city, calling him a monster, and somehow it did him no good. The boy had been an innocent. In the end, did it matter that he'd asked? Did it make him any less of a murderer?

Raphael considered the children he'd watched in the streets, the ones who didn't know any better. It would have been murder, to creep into their rooms and slit their throats so they wouldn't have to know the pains of disappointment and adulthood. He knew it as surely as he knew the sky to be blue. If one of the little girls, in pigtails and dirty jeans, had approached him and asked for death, demanded it, he wouldn't have done it. Or so he told himself.

He'd also once told himself that he would never kill an innocent. He'd also once told himself that he would never let his anger get the best of him. Hadn't he said to himself once, also, that he would never harm his family? Three marks against him, on those grounds. The look that Leonardo's eyes had borne, pinned beneath him and half an inch away from dying at his own brother's hands, flashed before him mockingly.

His phone had stopped ringing some time ago, but he didn't care to see who it had been to begin with. On some level, he knew who it had been, because only Leo called so often before giving up. He was probably worried. Maybe it would have been easier if he didn't care at all.

Feet came to a stumbling halt as the weight became too much to carry any further. His shell made a strange scraping sound as he slid down into a sitting position, drawing his knees up to his chest haphazardly, and he didn't care that it was probably scratched. Pressing his face against his folded arms, he closed his eyes, took in a ragged breath, and waited to dissolve as he felt he surely must.

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It had occurred to him once that he'd never been afraid of the dark. He'd _never _been afraid of the dark or any monsters that might lie in wait for him there like Mikey and even Donnie had been. Sometimes he wondered if maybe it was because, on a deeper level, he'd understood that they were as close to monsters as this world ever got. It was a theory he tended to negate, because children never understood things like that. Once a thing like that was comprehended, childhood was over, and as far as he knew, he'd had a childhood of fair length.

The darkness that typically accompanied night didn't faze him. As though by some kind of rule, sewers were dark most of the time as it was. Which was why he'd always felt that Mikey's fear of darkness was ridiculous. On the same note, he'd come to understand that darkness just wasn't meant for some. Michelangelo was light in every aspect of his being, and he, Raphael, was not. In fact, he found himself to be more suited to darkness, to pulling it about him like a protective shield and adjusting himself to it accordingly.

He could always find bits and pieces of it within himself, stolen away without his having realized it, could pull them out only to find that they regenerated later on. Maybe the fact that it found a home so readily in him was what made it so easy to accept.

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The sound of his name being called was like an electric jolt throughout his entire body, but he didn't give it the satisfaction of a prompt response. His head lifted, eyes opened, and a breath was released as his brothers landed before him in a neat formation. There was silence for a while, how long he wasn't sure, during which he realized that he hadn't gotten rid of the blood. Catching sight of it, drying and cracking and peeling away from his skin (just how long had he been here?), he flinched, and the act seemed to break his brothers out of their stupor because they were very suddenly _there. _

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Leonardo, while certainly not fearless, was not the type who could be shaken easily. Needless to say, the sight of his little brother, blood-covered and pale and shaking as he was, was one of the few things that had the ability to strike fear into his very core; and it did so with all the power he'd forgotten fear could have, nailing his feet to the roof and piercing his heart painfully.

"R-Raphael?" He called uncertainly. The younger turtle was silent and still, showing no indication that he'd heard. Just when Leo was beginning to debate whether or not he was even breathing, he lifted his head slightly, focusing on them half-heartedly. There was silence then, so long but contained in a brief moment, because none of them knew what to say to the strange violation in their brother's eyes. He almost closed his eyes then, almost wept because this was what he had always been afraid to find one day, with Raphael doing what he'd been doing.

The broken creature before them caught sight of his arms and flinched, effectively unfreezing three pairs of feet, and they stepped forward. Leo stopped himself while still at a slight distance, because Donnie and Mikey would probably have a better handle on things from this point and that certainly appeared to be the case.

Donatello was on one knee beside his brother, asking what had happened, where was he hurt, could he stand, all the while taking his own mental notes and muttering to himself. Mikey, meanwhile, sat directly next to Raphael, placing a hand on his shoulder, rambling about how everything was going to be fine. The second-youngest glanced at himself again, sent a look that was almost apologetic towards his only little brother, whose face sharpened with concern that he tried to cover up with a casual waving off of the circumstances. Amber eyes met Leo's own, carrying a pleading look that he hadn't seen since they were small children, when Raphael hadn't been too tough to cry over skinned knees and had expected his oldest brother to fix it, to understand how much it hurt without teasing him or making it worse. This, he suspected, would take more than a band-aid to repair.

Leonardo stepped forward, knelt down, gently placed a hand on Raph's arm. As though unable to bear the weight, his little brother looked away sharply, pulled his knees more tightly to his body.

"H-he was only a kid," the red-clad ninja murmured roughly, voice saturated with self-loathing. "I can't- Leo, he asked me to- and I-" Leo closed his eyes as understanding began sinking in. What else would this city end up stealing from his brother? What more could it possibly weigh him down with? Taking in and releasing a deep breath, he forced his eyes back open and gave Raph's shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

"We'll get you home," he said gently, glad that his other brothers had managed to control their reactions. "We'll get you cleaned up, and then we'll sort this out. It's- it's going to be okay, Raph."

Judging from the shaky smirk that crept across the other's face, he doubted he was so easy to believe.

Raph had always been good at catching him in a lie.

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He had never been good with words. It was a strange thought to have, out of the blue, but it was truthful nonetheless and he let it be. Mikey had always been able to pull words out of nothingness, to find the perfect thing to say to alleviate tension. Leonardo and Donatello spoke intelligently, with precise dialect and, in the case of the latter, words too large for normal people to understand. His older brothers had always been more diplomatic, and his younger brother had always been more personable. He fell somewhere between silence and anger, speaking when it mattered, blunt and realistic and threatening when need be. On other occasions, when apologizing or showing gratitude, when explaining what had gone wrong, he found his tongue to be a cumbersome burden to contend with.

Actions could really speak so much more loudly than words.

It was easier, really, to say what he needed if words weren't necessary. Like sitting down to watch a movie he hated, surrendering the remote during wrestling on occasion, starting the coffee before Don got up in the morning. Little things. In the face of the mistakes he'd made, it probably wasn't enough. But maybe that was him all over again: trying and ultimately falling short.

Maybe he'd have to work on that.

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It caused him no small amount of shame to have his little brother see him like this. Mikey, of all of them, had always been so much more innocent, so much more ignorant of the weight of the dead and the never-ending feeling of blood. He didn't want to be the reason that their baby found out all the sooner. Having Leo and Don there didn't burn quite so much, because they _knew _as well as he, himself, knew. And he could tell that they knew that he knew from the way Leo's eyes closed at his words.

Vaguely, he became aware of his brothers attempting to coax him up, to guide him to- where, exactly? Choosing to ignore their efforts, he pulled his knees more tightly to his plastron, wondering if the act would help him hold himself together. He felt dangerously close to breaking into pieces under their concerned stares, and it was no wonder they seemed so afraid to touch him, with so much blood and dead flesh draped over him. His skin seemed to be crawling, which made him wonder if it was somehow afraid of touching him, too. A monster, afraid of itself. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde all over again, except he didn't have another half to blame; he was one being in itself, and he had no excuses for what he had done.

There were words, and hands on his arms, and he was set unsteadily on his feet. It registered belatedly, as many things did; he found himself staring at his hands, nearly unrecognizable to his own eyes and the weight of everything nearly drove him to his knees. And it would have if his brothers hadn't caught him before he could hit the ground and wait to dissipate.

He was covered in the blood of an innocent. He had _killed _an innocent.

His skin was itching.

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_Was that a total failure? A hit or a miss? I tried to find myself a beta-reader to help out, but everyone's so busy! I've never tried anything quite like this before, so please tell me what you think. I'll take whatever you have to say, comments, criticism, all of that. Criticism in particular, because I find this iffy. Review?_


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